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passed its due limits. He observes : " These figures show 

 how little reason there is for the not uncommon opinion that 

 collegiate education is advancing too rapidly and extending 

 itself too widely. The growing cost of living, especially in 

 large towns, the comparatively poor prospects of a successful 

 career after graduating, owing to the very keen competition 

 that exists for employment in almost all the branches of the 

 public or the private service — these and other similiar con- 

 siderations will tend to deter all except young men favorably 

 circumstanced as regards means or possessed of exceptionally 

 good natural ability, from entering on a collegiate course of 

 instruction." The results of the higher education too, so far 

 as they have gone, have been, on the whole, most beneficial. 

 There has been a distinct improvement in both the public and 

 private morality of all those who have come under its influence. 

 Many unreasonable prejudices which stand in the way of the 

 progress of the country are being silently transformed into 

 practices more in consonance with the spirit of the present 

 times and less injurious to the welfare of the community, 

 and the way is being gradually prepared for still greater 

 social changes. Brahmin young men, who would never have 

 dreamed of working in a dissecting* room in a medical 

 laboratory or of crossing the sea to serve in Burma, 

 have little scruple now in taking up work of either kind. 

 These results are entirely due to the forces which have 

 been set in motion by the British Government, among which 

 the system of education introduced by it is undoubtedly 

 the most potent; and as the Government is precluded by 

 differences of race and religion from actively interfering 

 to help on or regulate these changes, it is all the more incum- 

 bent on it to afford indirect encouragement by concentra- 

 ting all its efforts for the advance of education. In all poor 

 countries the persons who first come under the influence of 

 education are not the scions of the aristocracy, but scholars ^^® 

 sprung from the poorer classes, who from religious motives 

 devote themselves to the pursuit of knowledge ; and this was 

 the case in England itself 500 years ago, when the English 

 universities swarmed with thousands of poor scholars who 



'•^ In Scotland even in the present day a considerable portion of the scholars edn- 

 cated in the universities belong to the labouring class. Sir Lyon Playfair in his essays 

 on subjects of Social Welfare remarks : " It is believed that 500 working men or sons of 

 working men are in attendance in these Scottish Universities. Many that I have per- 

 sonally known have worked hard during the summer as ploughmen, fishermen, masons 

 carpenters — in one or two cases which I happen to know as gillies to young English 

 University Students during grouse shooting — in order that they might have enough to 

 pay their moderate fees and live on porridge and milk during the winter sessions of 

 the universities." 



